Book #30

Impossible by Nancy Werlin
384 pages
Popular Fiction
"The Elfin Knight"
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Rememberme to one who lives there
She must be a true love of mine

Tell her she'll sleep in a goose-feather bead
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Tell her I swear she'll have nothing to dread
She must be a true love of mine

Tell her tomorrow her answer make known
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
What e'er she may say I'll not leave her alone
She must be a true love of mine

Her answer it came in a week and a day
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
I'm sorry, good sir, I must answer thee nay
I'll not be a true love of thine

From the sting of my curse she can never be free
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Unless she unravels my riddlings three
She will be a true love of mine

Tell her to make me a magical shirt
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Without ant seam or needlework
Else she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to find me an acre of land
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
Between the salt water and the sea strand
Else she'll be a true love of mine

Tell her to plow it with just a goat's horn
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme
And sow it all over with one grain of a corn
Else she'll be a true love of mine
And her daughters forever possessions of mine

Lucy Scarborough is raped on prom night and finds herself pregnant. Committed to keeping the baby, she nonetheless sees similarities between herself and her mentally ill mother, Miranda, who had Lucy as a teen as well. Miranda then left her in the care of nurse/midwife, Soledad and Leo Markowitz who are now Lucy's caring foster parents. When life friend and boy-next-door, Zach, comes home from college to spend the summer with Lucy and her family he stumbles upon Miranda's teenage diary which outlines a curse set upon the Scarborough girls generations ago. A curse that was placed on them by the Elfin Knight who, after ancesstress Fenellas' snub, made it so that at eighteen each women will fall into madness after giving birth to a daughter. Lucy has nine months to break the curse and to do so she must complete the three seemingly impossible tasks set before her in the ballad "The Elfin Knight" (see above). None of which her forebears have ever come close to, but they didn't have help from the selfless Markowitzes, love-struck and self-sacrificing Zach, or the internet, where goat horns are found easily. Lucy just may be the luckiest accursed girl in exsistence. But only if she beats the curse and saves her life as well as her unborn daughters. Very suspenseful but you still know the outcome is going to be good.
This was hands-down my favorite book, right after the Hunger Games series. I loved how it didn't dwell on the fantasy stuff too much and was fast-paced. But I didn't like that some stuff was too vague; the pregnancy, her romance with Zach, friends but that's okay I just made it up for my benefit.